Viewing profile — csallen

How different is "mapping supermassive black holes" from "mapping galaxies"?

People react negatively to this, because they fear a dystopian society of the sort we've seen in plenty of movies, and rightfully so. But it's also worth pointing out that "consequ…

1. Vocal minority will be, by definition, the loudest. And complainers/haters tend to be more vocal. Studies have looked at which emotions lead people to share, and outrage tops th…

It just violates my expectations, and thus feels frustrating. And there's almost no benefit. It would be like if my shoes suddenly made me take steps at perfect widths, and no matt…

I think this argument is jumbled, or at least way too complex to have such strong and simple conclusions. There are at least four issues at work, all of which are complex to measur…

Why do you care so much about the divide between rich and poor, as opposed to say, just the quality of life of the poor? If rich people got 10x poorer, would that make you equally …

It's not that hard for AI to generate images of handwriting.

> - Society needs a strong middle class and social upwards mobility. The middle class is shrinking and this is by design. If we continue to vote in Billionaire backed politicians, …

What do you think is being proposed, exactly? Some sort of alternative sun that's going to shine on the entire earth, that we'll all be forced to look at?

> Your response is basically 'Works on my machine!'. The majority of people in Western countries are not in the lower income brackets, but in the middle and upper brackets. Plus ex…

Solar panels aren't nature. Shining lights on solar panels is not going to be an environmental disaster.

> You're just not someone who has to deal with these problems. Are we solving them? Not sure what you're [basing] that of. Almost every major measure of human progress and prosperi…

Life is better for the poorest in society than it's ever been, thanks in large part to the nonstop proliferation and cheapening of technology in the past 200 years, esp. the past 1…

> But do you really think life has been getting better in the last 10 years say? Uh, yeah. My TV's much better, my video games are better, programming is easier and more fun with t…

What's your point? Progress is not perfection. There will always be human suffering. Acknowledging that there's progress is not the same thing as ignoring the fact that there's suf…

Uhhh, I don't know what you're reading, but the comment I was replied to was complaining about the "subscription economy" and not having enough time to watch movies as evidence why…

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A gigantic source of light in the sky that lights up a part of the Earth and is too bright to look at is... the sun. I think we're all used to the sun.

*spoiler alert* It seems clear to me that the Tallyman itself is the AI in this allegory, a man-awoken sentience that's mechanical and mathematical in its behavior. It's also bound…

You're on Hacker News. This is a site full of developers who are convinced that "proper software engineering" is 100% of what makes a business successful, and everything and everyo…

> … ephemeral stimulation you can't even remember 30 seconds after seeing it. I know 50 year old adults who can spend entire hours just in this mesmerized state of flicking through…

We have a world built for humans, designed for humans to walk around and get things done. How, exactly, would it not be useful to have a robot that looks, walks, runs, jumps, lifts…

> There's no risk because, like you said, "I could have easily gone and gotten a job at Google and made a lot more money very easily." You can always go back to selling your labor …

I'm intentionally off the startup grid, for now at least. Happy travels, though. Seems really fun! I did the same after leaving SF